Tom Dowd - Burning Bright

"Why the Brotherhood?"

He shrugged. “There might be a connection between what's going on here and them, but I don't know."

"All right. I can at least try," she said. "Where will you be searching?"

"Magicknet," he said.

"Never heard of it"

"No reason you should have. It's like Shadowland for magicians. I think I know where to access it, but it might take a little work."

She nodded, then began tapping in commands at the terminal.

A moment later Kyle was busy doing the same.

It took him just over an hour to track down the access number for Magicknet's Chicago node. It wasn't a public board, but one used by those interested in pirated spell information, formulae, and other non-public information on the subject of magic. He knew there were several continuously updated databases there on the subject of spirits, their abilities, and origins. If anyone who'd ever accessed the board had encountered anything even remotely similar, it would be noted in the archives. Unless he was dealing with a unique, or possibly small group of virtually unique spirits, Kyle figured his chances would be pretty good. But considering that the total database of Magicknet was measured in terabytes, trillions of bytes of data, that search could take hours… But that's what computers were for.

Across the room, Hanna was working her way diligently toward finding the more mundane Shadowland system. She was in mid-call, trying to cajole a news-snoop acquaintance of hers into giving her the telecom number of a data fiend who might know Shadowland's current access number. Not wanting to interrupt her, he simply waved, pointed to the door, and quietly left. Intent on her efforts, she barely noticed.

Ellen Shaw's apartment was on Chicago's west side, in the neighborhood known as Cicero. Kyle was surprised to find a parking spot so easily; he'd planned to double-park and let Truman worry about the five-hundred nuyen fine. Instead, he switched to manual control and guided the car into an ample spot one door down from where Ellen Shaw lived.

It was late afternoon, but the block was quiet Further up the street, a group of kids were playing with some kind of remote-control aircraft that buzzed in and out of a courtyard apartment. Two nearly white squirrels eyed him expectantly, waiting for some offering of food. He waved at them and kept walking.

His sister-in-law's apartment house was a deep U-shape, with four entrances and about six times that number of units. It was run-down, the courtyard choked with weeds and roving bits of trash caught in the breeze. He pressed the apartment buzzer, but couldn't tell if it worked since there was no answer and he heard no sound of it from the window two stories above. He tried to remember if he had heard the bell the only other time he was here.

Stepping back from the door, he looked upward at the closed and curtained windows of Ellen's apartment. There was no sign of movement, and on an August afternoon, he'd have expected at least one of the windows to be open to catch the courtyard breeze. He stepped forward again and examined the entrance door. The lock was old, mechanical. That was good.

He pressed the buzzer once more, then placed his hand over the lock. Senses extended, he focused the forces of magic through him, his hand, and into the lock. He wove them together until the lock was infused with mystical energy, ready to obey his command. He willed it open. The door swung inward.

The inner door had once also carried a lock, but it was long gone, with only a shabby hole remaining. He moved through it, up the broken and musty staircase to the second floor. He stopped in front of the door at the top of the stairs, apartment 2S.

Kyle listened at the door, but heard nothing. He knocked firmly, and was surprised to hear a sudden scrambling from inside. The sound moved quickly toward him, snapping and clicking across the hardwood floor of the apartment. He stepped backward, a barrier spell ready, but the noise seemed to stop at the door.

He waited, and then whatever it was scratched, almost quietly, at the bottom of the door, near the frame. It scratched again and Kyle focused his magic and his senses, specifically his vision, projecting it forward, past the door and into the apartment. He looked down.

And the gray and white cat, as such small creatures are inexplicably wont to do, looked up at him. It was panting, thin, and starving, its nose dry and cracked from dehydration. It seemed to be trying to make a noise, but Kyle, on the far side of the door, heard nothing.

He disintegrated the lock with a carefully aimed dart of focused violet power. The cat, whose name he knew to be Grendel, scooted away as fast as it could, slipping and skidding across the floor as it disappeared around the corner.

Kyle expected a terrible smell when he entered, but the short hall was only musty, hot, and dry. Bits of metal lock and wooden door were scattered down the hall and into the Irving room, but he closed the door behind him, pushing at the twisted wood until it shut. The main room was as Spartan as he remembered it, and showed no signs of anything out of the ordinary. A single red light flashed repeatedly on the telecom.

He ignored it for the moment and pulled aside one of the heavy curtains, letting light spill into the apartment. Kyle then cautiously entered the next room, the dining room, turning right and following the path of the cat. It was nowhere to be seen, and the room was unremarkable. The kitchen to the left was the same, except that the trash can showed signs of having been rifled and raided. The cat's empty bowls were near the door to the rear stair, next to its obviously used litter box and a compacted bag of trash.

Kyle walked across the room and into the short hall that led to the bathroom at the end and the bedroom across from it. He checked the latter first. The bed was unmade. A small fan on a nearby night stand blew warm air across the sheets. The room, except for its furniture, was empty. A pair of dull eyes stared at him from under the bed. Grendel.

A quick sweep of the rest of the apartment: the bathroom and various closets revealed nothing. He filled the water and food bowls in the kitchen, and Grendel, needing no coaxing, attacked them with renewed energy.

Except for some sad-looking plants in the living room, that cat, Kyle suspected, was the only living thing that had been in that apartment in close to a week.

Of the seven messages, six were from Bern. The seventh was a wrong number.

He searched the apartment and found little, save a small cache of secreted Universal Brotherhood literature and chips in a small box in the closet. Then, in a plastic tray in me topmost drawer of the dresser, he found Ellen's house keys and wallet, with her credstick slipped neatly into its holder in the wallet's spine. Also stuffed in there was a small wad of about a hundred and twenty dollars' worth of paper money. Unless these were all spares, Ellen Shaw had gone out a week ago without her money, her ID, or her keys, and never returned.

Kyle poked through the apartment for another hour or so, eventually refusing to feed Grendel after the cat begged for a fourth bowl of food. When he finally left, Kyle could do little about the door lock, so he used his magic to warp the wood slightly once the door was closed. The door would open, but someone would have to use his shoulder to do so. He'd let Beth know about the cat.

Outside, the kids had moved closer to this end of the street, and an Eagle Security patrol car had pulled up alongside a white minivan parked in front of a fire hydrant near where the kids had originally been playing. One officer, a young Chinese man, was obviously scanning the license plate and running it through his portacomp. His partner, a woman, Kyle suspected, though he couldn't tell much more about her, was on the driver's side talking to someone he couldn't see through the tint on the windscreen. As he came out, they both turned and looked at him.